We have a thing called the Walking Kata, or Tegatana no Kata. We all say its chock full of aikido principles and productive movement patterns. Other schools break it into two parts: unsoku dosa(footwork), and tegatana dosa( hand work). We throw it into a big ole ball. We are going to look at Tomiki's master clip here, Aikido Kyogi. While I don't speak Japanese, Tetsuro's Nariyama's book Aikido Randori has a conceptual blueprint on page 286. I think they actually show it in the film.
Basically Tommy had 3 principles of aikido: natural posture, non-resistance, breaking balance.
His practice of these principles of Aikido had three areas: tai sabaki, point of contact, and te sabaki. Tegatana no Kata figures heavily in all 3 practices.
Tai-sabaki practice,included posture and movement(this section in Kyogi is when Tommy is standing and sitting in seiza, he's basically saying you have to stand and sometimes sit in seiza. Then he goes into his 8 ways of moving, unsoku dosa, and then kneewalking.
The next part is classified as point of contact. he does a high, medium, low. Then he does some hand movements and sword movements and then he does Tegatana Dosa. Like I said, the lesson here I suppose is the range of motion where you can be touched or touch the other guy. The exercise he does here is called tegatana awase where him and Ohba dance around and keep maai/metsuke. After that he combines the first practice of tai sabaki, with maai and metsuke, with dodging Ohbas shomenuchi and bokken. Tegatana dosa supply's the variables of ways of touching being touched, point of contact ideas.
Then there is the te sabaki (hand movement) section. This is broken down into two areas with 2 subareas each. You have when grasped: breaking away, and nigiri gaeshi. And when separated: avoiding and grasping. The blocking exercise would fall under when separated, I suppose this is avoidance, I also suppose that grasping could come anytime after avoidance. We see actual hand movements from tegatana dosa. Next we have the when grasped practice where Ohba has a knife. we actually see hand positioning and movements from tegatana no kata.
The next section I'm going to have to bitch about for a minute. Folks, 17 kata IS NOT the primary mode of Tomiki ryu instruction, not how Tommy saw it anyway. The actual instruction is the set of 19. You have 5 atemi waza, 6 hiji waza, 8 tekubi waza. If you believe Nariyama he relates the atemi waza in principle to koshiki no kata and kendo, He relates the hiji waza in principle to Koshiki No Kata. The Uki Waza he attributes to Judo which makes sense because they are present in randori no kata and not the 19. Anyway, the concepts in Tegatana no Kata relate more heavily to the 19 than they do in randori no kata.
Tommy places the concept of tsukuri(fitting) after practice of principle. He says that tsukuri has to do with the wrists, elbow, and chin. He also says that jodan and gedan are tsukuri also referring to the atemi waza. He goes over straight techniques, he fits and throws. Then he does some more easily identifyable tegatana movements when he is grasped, but all of these throws have tai sabaki, point of contact, and te sabaki practice involved. He actually does ten(10) separate techniques.
Next is the tekubi waza. He separates it in kote hineri and kote gaeshi. same format, same thing except this illustrates the breaking away from being grasped portion of te sabaki. There are 9 hineri if I counted right. 25+9. I think thats 34. Next is kote gaeshi. same format. separated and grasped. 8 techniques/ideas. 34+8. 42 I think. I may have missed one or two here and there. But that's 42 ideas, all involving some kind element that can be traced to tegatana no kata.
Also, to take a break from my bitching. I may have been looking at the kyogi too much but I think that alot of what Tommy is doing has to do with the last two movements of tegatana no kata at least in his applied tai sabaki. He moves alot in a backwards diagonal, and also seems to move forward in an opposite hand foot manner. You can see it some when he applies tsukuri in the 19.
Well, since I went brain dead looking at the 19 and counting. We finally get to the 17. The one thing that I notice is that his tai sabaki seems to combine a side step and a chalice step facing sometimes its straight 90 degrees, sometimes it has a little backwards diagonal. Also, the tsukuri is almost always at the wrist.
My point is that Tommy had a much wider base of instruction than he's given credit. He had his principles and practices to apply these principles. He had is tsukuri (fit) and kake (execution) as well but the meat of his instructional sandwich lay in his practice methodology, and most of it had to do with Tegatana no Kata.
Our style of Aikido is a idiosyncratic form of Tomiki ryu. But really every martial art is idiosyncratic. Aikido is an idiosyncratic form of daito ryu. Tae kwon do is an idiosyncratic form of shotokan karate. Judo is an idiosyncratic form of jiujitsu. Brazilian juijitsu is an idiosyncratic form of judo. However, If one would say Tomiki ryu is a combination of kito-ryu and daito ryu, then I would say that our lineage of Tomiki filters this kito/daito bag of tricks through the practice of non-competitive judo.
You can almost compare us to Brazilian jujitsu. Things have been filtered out. I say this in relation to Tegatana no kata. Tomiki's tegatana was expanded upon through the medium of 42 techniques. Our relationship with Tegatana spans 17 techniques, with our sheering off balance its hard too see sometimes. But like Brazillain jujitsu what doesnt get filtered gets magnified. Things get added, like a sheering offbalance concept and the Big 10. I'm not bitching, I'm just saying we've picked our poison and specialized just like Brazilian Jujitsu. I can say that about Shodokan Aikido as well. They have the same 17 that we do, and don't apply tegatana no kata the way Tomiki envisioned either. They filtered other things out, and magnified others. However, I think our soft touch is pretty neat thing that makes us different. I do wonder what a non-competitive Tomiki Branch based off of the 19 model would look like.
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